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Animal Well Discussion (Nintendo Switch) [game]
 
Animal Well on the Switch
9.08/10 from 6 user ratings

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05/10/24, 16:51  
 
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Animal Well is a fairly non-linear Metroidvania with a moody setting and no filler. There's no combat or dialogue or cutscenes, only platforming and puzzles and animals that are cute and/or try to eat you.

I get the sense that the game is also in that Fez/Tunic vein of having some mysterious larger puzzles in the background for you to figure out, but haven't really encountered anything other than background clues to give me that impression. Plus the whole vibe of it, I guess.

I've been playing for maybe four hours, and I think I've got probably 80% of the map filled out, but it feels like there's still a decent bit I'm missing.

It's neat, and I like it. Anyone else playing?
05/10/24, 16:51   
I'll be grabbing it in a few days! The store page description makes it sound like the best of Zelda combined with the best of Spelunky.
05/10/24, 18:03   
I don't know anything about this DUNKEY guy that gets talked about sometimes but I guess this is the first game released under his indie publishing company so it seems like he made a good choice there.

But I saw the reviews and trailer and instantly added it to my wishlist. It looks awesome. I might just up and buy it right away, get in on the HYPE right now.
05/10/24, 18:36   
Edited: 05/10/24, 18:40
Okay I played it for an hour, yeah this is good. So far it's a Metroidvania with incredible aesthetics, and the puzzles and items so far have been inventive—I already feel like I'm doing things I'm not supposed to, in a good way. Hoping the mechanics it introduces as the game goes on continue to compound on each other.
05/10/24, 21:35   
I'm pretty far into the game now (4 flames, 35ish eggs, think I have most of the inventory filled out) and it's a gem. I'm taking plenty of screenshots and videos, making notes on the map, and checking every nook and cranny. I definitely did not have 80% of the map filled out earlier like I thought, I think I might be at that point now. I have also confirmed that the whale can eat you.

It's just about everything I want from a Metroidvania puzzle platformer, and perhaps just as importantly nothing I don't want.
05/11/24, 16:53   
This game is really great! It reminds me a lot of a game I played last October called Gordy and the Monster Moon (from Jim Stormdancer, the developer of Frog Fractions).

Jim Stormdancer said:
I've described Gordy as "Zelda-like" but here are some specific things I was trying for, even if I didn't succeed at all of them:

- New or underutilized setting/theme. Steam didn't even have a "Halloween" tag!
- I don't want to kill things. Preferably no combat, but at the very least not swords/guns again.
- Free exploration. Soft gates rather than hard. Player knowledge gates rather than collectibles.
- No explicit tutorials. Games should be mysterious! Let me figure it out. (Help me figure it out.)
- New items with their own rules, e.g. not the hookshot again. Hookshot again is not mysterious.
- Minimal text/exposition.

I've already played A Short Hike. It's great! Tunic is probably the next closest match I've played. It's also great! What else is out there?

Animal Well hits all of these except for "no hard gates," but its items are so inventive that it's worth forcing the player to use them.
05/13/24, 17:59   
Edited: 05/16/24, 23:05
So after like 15+ hours it just hit me that this game is La-Mulana with the rough edges sanded down. I mean that as a compliment! La-Mulana was punishingly difficult, and made me feel like a weak dumbo who had to look up a hint as often as it made me feel like the smartest man alive.

Animal Well is a lot more forgiving while still asking a lot of the player if they're going it alone, and even has a perfect little off-ramp for the player to shelve it when the credits roll after a worthy final challenge, but well before the game's given up all of its optional challenges and pickups for true sickos who want more out of it.
05/14/24, 02:19   
Edited: 05/14/24, 02:19
I've heard a lot of good things about this game. Guess I'll add it to my Wishlist and check it out soon(ish). Might be bad timing on my part, because this seems like a game I could really get into, but I (finally) just started Monster Hunter Rise with my IRL buddies and now a lot of my time is going towards THAT game at the moment.

With little time for much else.
05/14/24, 22:31   
Ok I played the first hour or so. It's pretty cool. But I definitely see the comparison to La-Mulana. I hope Nate is right that it is more forgiving! Because even after an hour and going to a bunch of places I'm not sure that I've really made much progress. I just get to a lot of stuff that I may or may not be able to solve right now.
05/15/24, 00:32   
@Secret_Tunnel
Nice writeup! I like a lot of those elements as well and they're what made Tunic really stand out to me.

I've beaten Animal Well and enjoyed it--in fact, I'm writing the review for it for NF Magazine. But I'm interested in the post-game search, as I've already found a number of interesting things that make me want to explore further.
05/16/24, 04:50   
Ok I put another few hours in. It's clicking more with me now that I got the yo-yo. This is a really cool game. Definitely does the whole "how do I get through this world?" thing from Metroidvanias much better than most do. Like, so many Metroidvanias are non-linear but there is barely a point to them being non-linear since there is still usually just one way to go and everything else is gated by not having the right power-up yet or whatever. Animal Well feels a lot more like this semi-open world I have to explore and figure out how to make progress in it. Sure a lot is still gated off but it's not always some clear "well, I don't have that item yet this must not be the one way I'm supposed to go right now, I'll come back when I do" type thing.

With that said I do still feel a bit like I'm still not sure what is going on. It just kind of throws you in with no story or explanation for anything, including what the items you pick up are. Which is kind of cool? But then also makes it feel like it lacks a sense of progression in a way?
05/16/24, 19:20   
Edited: 05/16/24, 19:23
nate38 said:
Animal Well is a lot more forgiving while still asking a lot of the player if they're going it alone, and even has a perfect little off-ramp for the player to shelve it when the credits roll after a worthy final challenge, but well before the game's given up all of its optional challenges and pickups for true sickos who want more out of it.

Yeah, I think Animal Well absolutely nails this. I had a big issue with Tunic requiring you find 10 fairies in order to get one of the final pages. That intermingling of its layers, combined with having such a huge world, made the last third of the game feel really monotonous.

But Animal Well's main path felt climactic enough, and it's secrets are obtuse enough, that I could have happily put the game down after hitting the credits. But the world is small, so I've kept popping in to knock out a few more collectibles every now and then without feeling pressured to.

12 hours in, I've got 55 eggs and had run out of ideas for where to find more, but at the last second before putting the game down during my last session, I had a crazy idea and realized what I'm supposed to do to solve a certain deep game-spanning puzzle. Now I'm tantalized and can't wait to play more.
05/16/24, 23:04   
@Secret_Tunnel

Can I get a hint? I just played a half hour earlier with zilch to show for it. Feels bad, man.

I'm at I think 52 eggs and I've found a number of post-game extra deals. I've gotten all the candles and did the stuff directly from/after that. I have a lot of loose ends and weird things I've taken screens of but with no idea what to do with them:

POST-GAME SPOILERS PROBABLY

1) A few sets of arrow directions on the walls only viewable with certain items. I thought these would correspond to the Flute, but nope.

2) Weird little baby-bottle shapes on a few walls only viewable with that one thing. No idea what to do with these.

3) Numbers on the doors of the big clock.

4) That rabbit pixel painting thing. I figured out a way to alter it and have even found a nearby secret that seems to hint at something, but again, not sure what to do with it.

5) The jellyfish hold a UV hint as well that I wrote down on the map. But again, don't know what to do with these.

6) Pressing UP a lot seems to turn my character into...an apple? Huh?

As for items, I currently have (big spoilers) the UV light, the better Bubble, the Remote, and the Top.

And the darned Kangaroo is very fickle on when/where he shows up. I gotta see him again!

I'm at the point where I don't want to actually look anything up yet, but it's getting disheartening not finding stuff at the moment, so I need some new leads. With Tunic there was still a pretty clear goal in mind in the late-game, but I'm starting to feel like I'm just spinning my wheels since I'm unsure of what the endgame here is (outside of just getting all the eggs).
05/17/24, 00:16   
Edited: 05/17/24, 00:18
Wait wtf. I looked up the dev's Twitter and saw "Chicago" and was thinking how did someone in Chicago come out of nowhere with this game and not be a known entity in the Chicago indie dev community?

Then I saw his picture and was like oh I see... he is a known entity. I totally know the dev lol. I mean, not super well or anything but I've seen him around a bunch and we had to have talked here and there before. And yet I never even heard of this project until it released? Well, I did move away from Chicago almost 3 years ago so I haven't been keeping up with the scene. He said it took 7 years to make but I don't know when he started showing it off.

Anyway, this has to be one of the biggest Chicago developed indie games ever. Congrats to the guy I sort of but don't truly know?!
05/17/24, 09:48   
Edited: 05/17/24, 09:49
@TriforceBun

I wrote up a whole long thing about the candles for you, then realized that you'd already done that, so I looked at your spoilers haha. I'll respond to each one vaguely; for the most part I'm just as stumped as you are, but there's one little thing you're missing that applies to a couple of these:

TriforceBun said:
@Secret_Tunnel
POST-GAME SPOILERS PROBABLY

1) A few sets of arrow directions on the walls only viewable with certain items. I thought these would correspond to the Flute, but nope.

RESPONSE:
You're right, you're just not playing it in the right spot. Think about where you discovered the first one of these, and experiment with a narrative loose end in that area. (This seems like it would be difficult to go back and realize after the fact...)

I've also found one longer set of arrow directions with the UV light that should work anywhere you play it; if that one didn't work for you, try it again, you might've just missed an input.


2) Weird little baby-bottle shapes on a few walls only viewable with that one thing. No idea what to do with these.

RESPONSE:
I only just encountered these myself; I think these are just egg hints.

3) Numbers on the doors of the big clock.

RESPONSE:
Only just found these myself, and yeah, I'm really curious how to increment them. I have one idea for what to do with them that's a long shot.

4) That rabbit pixel painting thing. I figured out a way to alter it and have even found a nearby secret that seems to hint at something, but again, not sure what to do with it.

RESPONSE:
I figured out how to alter it too, not sure if it corresponds to anything on the puzzle.

5) The jellyfish hold a UV hint as well that I wrote down on the map. But again, don't know what to do with these.

RESPONSE:
You know what to do with these, you just weren't standing in the right spot.

6) Pressing UP a lot seems to turn my character into...an apple? Huh?

RESPONSE:
I realized this last night too and have no clue haha.

I'll also say in general that there are three or four BIG puzzles I've solved that have all triggered a very specific thing to happen which has started to point me to what the "third layer" to this game is beyond hitting the credits and finding all the eggs. I don't quite know how to quantify my progress yet, but it seems quantifiable. If you've been this observant so far, you will eventually figure these out! Keep paying attention to little details, filling out holes in your map, and taking important note of the occasional obvious big hints you'll run into.
05/17/24, 17:53   
@Secret_Tunnel
Thanks for the replies! Interestingly, it sounds like we're pretty much at the same spot now since I had a little luck last night and more or less figured out what to do with point #1 up there (although I'm missing a single one, it seems like). And I imagine the results of that is what you were getting at with your "three or four BIG puzzles" thing--I'm guessing that's all related to getting to or otherwise "freeing" some of the animals. I have found a couple of rabbits beyond some rather devious puzzles...

I also looked up a couple small things because I needed a hint on one of my new items, and I wanted to know what was up with the skulls in that one late-game room near the final boss: apparently, one shows up there each time you die and you can only get the contents of the chest if you go through deathless. But due to this, the chest itself is more of a little extra reward than something functional.

Speaking of that room, I noticed that the faces on the wall correspond to different directions which made me originally think the Flute would be a solution. But when I tried applying the different notes to the series of faces in the room on the top-right corner of the map (which I thought would lead to a rabbit), nothing happened. Not sure if I did it wrong or if I'm completely on the wrong track, but I thought that would work...

It's a neat game. I feel like it's a good candidate for lots of stories and combined puzzle-solving, but at the same time I'm worried about getting TOO much information given to me.
05/17/24, 20:33   
Edited: 05/17/24, 20:54
@TriforceBun

That's good to know about the skull room, I'd have never realized that otherwise. You're on the right track with the hint in that room, you just once again need to play that song somewhere else.

The rabbits are indeed what I'm referring to as the "third layer" of the game. I keep finding them as a solve some of these wilder puzzles. As far as the cats go, I still need to find two more of those codes.

My momentum's definitely slowing down though—it feels like all I can do at this point is continue combing the map. I have a hunch there's one remaining big item that I have left to find prior to collecting all the eggs, but I've already exhausted all the major anomalies that I've found in the game world, so I'm stumped on where to find it!

Specifically, I have 7 eggs left to find, and I know where at least a few of them are, if not all of them. To get to them, I'll need some kind of hamster wheel item that lets me roll on spikes and move those mechanical platforms. The only two ideas I have for finding this item are freeing all of the cats or defeating the bat. Anyone done either of these?
05/17/24, 20:45   
Edited: 05/17/24, 21:28
I started it on PS+ and it was a good time for that first 30 min. There's a real sense of danger as I've gotten hurt quite a bit trying to investigate and figure things out. Though I've not died yet. I presume it just takes you to the last telephone.

Very weird. Like VVVVVV mixed with Tunic and Super Metroid and that's an interesting concept.
05/18/24, 00:04   
@DrFinkelstein If you die you go to the last telephone but not everything resets, like if you found items you still have them. Though some things do seem to reset sometimes? It's not clear to me what resets and when.
05/18/24, 00:39   
@Secret_Tunnel

I have defeated the bat...well, sorta. The best I can do is scare it away with three firecrackers (he seems to have "boss flash"). But it doesn't really do anything except make that room quieter, and then he returns whenever you save/reload or die and return to that area, so I don't know if there's anything more to that. I have one more cat to figure out how to free as well, and I'm missing the same item you are.
05/18/24, 01:00   
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